Guitars in the Garden for the Festival of Chichester!

Chichester guitarists Mitch Callow and John Mason once again join up with guest vocalist Anda Moore to offer Guitars In The Garden at this year's Festival of Chichester.
Guitars in the GardenGuitars in the Garden
Guitars in the Garden

They will be performing on Tuesday, July 3 at 4.30pm in the walled garden of St Martin’s Organic Coffee House, returning to the venue on Tuesday, July 10, again at 4.30pm. Tickets £8 from the Festival of Chichester box office. John and Mitch are promising café music, a genre from Bach to Blues, Django to contemporary, which is often interspersed with improvisation.

“This is our fourth year of doing the festival,” John said. “I have known Mitch, the other guitarist, for 20 odd years. We got a vocalist about four years ago and we formed Guitars in the Garden – because generally we tend to play garden venues! We go from Bach to the Eagles. We include a wide range. We like to offer a bit of everything.

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“We play mostly in the summer, but we also play throughout the year. I saw Mitch busking in Chichester, but I had known him through festivals. We both did the music centre down at the high school about 15 years ago.

“We are both classically-trained guitarists, but Mitch focuses on doing more the lead stuff. I am perhaps more on the rhythm side. But we also swap around and it seems to work. We do our own arrangements, and we just try to do a wide range to suit all tastes.

“We play St Martin’s quite frequently during the week. We have done that for years. We meet once every two to three weeks to play there. It’s just a nice small quaint little venue. They seem to like it there. With West Dean, we approached them on one occasion, and they seemed to like the idea. West Dean College is very big on guitars. They have their guitar festival in the summer, and the ambience of the whole place is great. It is lovely with the sheep in the background!”

As for vocalist Anda: “She is from Southampton, but was at Chichester University. She has got a very good voice and bubbly personality.”

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